


Written in Gold Ink

by onotherflights



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Pining, fanfic about fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 12:04:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15773751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onotherflights/pseuds/onotherflights
Summary: No one had wanted them to be together more than Otabek did.Or; Otabek reads some fanfiction and reflects on what is real, what is fiction, and what will be in time.





	Written in Gold Ink

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thoughtsappear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsappear/gifts).
  * Inspired by [To Be Continued](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14721902) by [thoughtsappear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsappear/pseuds/thoughtsappear). 



> I had a blast writing this, hope you enjoy it Tori!

“Have you ever heard of fan-fiction?” 

If someone had asked him the same question when he was fourteen, he would have lied all too quickly, closing tabs that revealed he knew all too much. But this was Yuri asking him, and for Yuri he was only ever honest, and he spit out the first thing he thought of. Coincidentally, it was the subject of those same internet searches when he’d been fourteen. 

“Yeah, like people who like Harry Potter and think that Harry should have ended up with Draco,” He said, feigning nonchalance. Like he had to think about it. His fourteen year old conscience never forgot. 

“You are such a nerd. But yes.”

The soft teasing was worth it to see the small smirk form in the corner of Yuri’s lip, just a blur of pixels on the screen. It was the kind of thing Yuri didn’t notice about himself, his mind elsewhere as he picked at his training-regimen diet of leaves and water. 

“Did you know people like to write about us?” 

Of course he knew. It was something he’d been too cautious to even look for, but he spent a lot of time on the internet and he’d  _ seen _ things. The fact that he had fans in the first place - even fans from outside of Kazakhstan - had once amazed him. He’d seen the drawings first, fanart, before he’d known about the fanfiction. When he’d started dating Yuri, and a few months later when fans realized that despite their subtle public affections they were more than just good friends, Otabek had just assumed that stories about him would give way to stories about  _ them _ . It made Otabek curious for what people had seen, what vast theories had been produced from their limited public interactions. 

“What’s there to write about?” He mused, slipping off his glasses to clean them carefully.

He kind of hated his glasses, if only for the fact that it was so hard to keep them as pristinely clean as he liked most things. He only wore them because Yuri had once said he looked handsome wearing them. He’d actually used the word  _ handsome _ , and something about it had made his heart malfunction at the time. It was a Yuri-caused condition that occured semi-regularly. 

“Oh mostly just stories about us falling in love in Barcelona, or in some of them we’re strangers.”

That was funny to think about, because when they had met for the second time in Spain, they were practically strangers. They didn’t fall in love in Barcelona until their second trip, under much different circumstances. Love was a much slower photograph to develop. 

“In some of them I’m with JJ, or you are,” Yuri continued, and Otabek shook his head amusedly. 

He grinned, “JJ probably wrote those stories himself.” 

They didn’t need to mention that Yuri still flushed whenever JJ trained with them, even before the workout started. Otabek noticed the way his boyfriend picked at his empty dinner plate, looking for a distraction from the topic and finding none. 

“Yeah, they’re kind of funny, my fans are weird.” 

Otabek knew that all too well. In a way, he’d sort of been one of those weird fans for a time. He’d had to find Yuri in Barcelona some kind of way, and a few fan’s twitter accounts were surprisingly effective. He wondered if anyone had missed Bekaplisetsky35 in the long absence from their twitter account. He should just delete it, but he didn’t. He knew back then that there were people who already ‘shipped’ them together. No one had wanted them to be together more than Otabek did. 

They talked for a short while longer before their time was up. Then Yuri blew him a kiss, and Otabek tucked it into his pocket. He saved every kiss he was too far away to catch for later. That was just how it was for them. They lived on the hope that there would always be a later and counted time on the number of days until their fingertips would meet again. It was excruciating, but worth it. 

Otabek tried to sleep but quickly found himself restless. Restlessness usually brought him some of his best ideas. He would perform his free skate over and over in his mind, tweaking and altering. His head would be invaded by a beat and wouldn’t leave until he got up in the middle of the might to mix, and then he would be perfecting beat drops and transitions until the morning.

Restlessness also brought him some of his worst ideas. As he pulled out his phone and let the dim white glow light up his face in the dark as he brought up the  _ Archive Of Our Own _ site on his browser, he wasn’t sure which one it was. 

It didn’t take him long to find some interesting options. 

As he scrolled, he found stories that were simple and sweet. There was the sappy, overtly romantic kind of things that Yuri not-so-secretly loved. 

He found stories of them that hardly resembled who they really were. He caught himself frowning, eyebrows pushed together as he glared at the glowing screen. Then somewhere around midnight when his eyelids were growing heavy and he was twelve chapters deep into a story about them being in a band, he caught a whiff of a realization. 

Maybe it was the hour of the new day, or the laughable impossibility that he would ever be a real singer, but it came to him all at once. All of the stories had a common thread. It didn’t matter what world or universe they were in, and it didn’t matter the circumstances or the obstacles between them. They found their way back to each other in every single story. 

He realized that it could all be true. If things just changed slightly, a movement of time, a moment passed, they may have never been in the story they were now. What if he hadn’t rented a bike in Barcelona? What if he hadn’t followed that fan twitter that let him know just when to swoop in and save Yuri? Most importantly, what if he’d been put in the intermediate class at Yakov’s class and he’d never seen Yuri’s eyes? Maybe they wouldn’t have met yet, but they would find each other eventually. Otabek had to believe that. 

He sent Yuri a few texts as he kept on reading, but his boyfriend was definitely sleeping the way that he should have been. 

When the sun was starting to rise and keeping his eyes open was a losing battle, Otabek wished he could write their story. He was happy and Yuri was happy, but if only he had the power he would edit a few things. He would backspace the noise of Almaty outside. He would add Yuri in his unedited glory, hair a wild mess and his arms spread out, taking up more than his share of the bed. He would would tighten the paragraphs of their lives until the overlap was perfect, each letter matching. 

But that just wasn’t how their story was written, not yet. 

When his alarm went off a few hours later he groaned but didn’t fight it. Coffee would cure him. He sent Yuri a picture to show his suffering, knowing he wouldn’t get a reply until his boyfriend woke up after a long night of sleep. He went off to practice and hoped his coaches wouldn’t yell at him too much. 

He checked his phone on his break and sure enough there was Yuri, existing as a green text alert.

_ Rough night? _

He smirked and instantly began a reply. He imagined Yuri was just waking up in his Moscow apartment, cold and frizzy-haired as he trudged into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He wished he could be there to kiss the mint flavor off his lip. 

_ I stayed up all night reading this story. I kept saying one more chapter. Next thing my alarm was going off. _

He watched the three dancing dots that indicated Yuri was replying. 

_ Was it an X-rated story? Did it give you ideas?  _

Yuri Plisetsky was going to be the death of him. 

He couldn’t say that the only idea reading fanfiction of them had given him was just the simple wish that Yuri was physically beside him. Or to give him toothpaste kisses. He was pretty sure that amount of direct affection would kill Yuri. Or make him roll his eyes so hard they got stuck. 

Instead he replied with:  _ It might have been. I’ve got to get back to practice _ . It was better to keep Yuri guessing, anticipating. Sometimes, being so far apart, half of their fun was filling in the blanks for themselves. 

_ This conversation isn’t over, Beka. _

It certainly wasn’t. 

It was another day that Yuri was a part of his narrative, spilled across the page in gold ink, demanding attention. No matter what happened between them in the future, if they figured out how to make it work, he would always be that. He would always be the most golden chapters of Otabek’s life. 

He replied quickly before he locked his phone and stepped back onto the ice. 

_ To be continued? _


End file.
